3/17 Thevenin's and Norton's Theorem

Here we try to simplify all the resistors as simple as possible.

We are introduced to Thevenin's Theorem where we treat the load resistor have an infinite resistance and remove it from the circuit. We then find the voltage where the load resistor would be as labeled in the bottom circuit and that gives us our Vth.

Using Thevenin's Theorem, we solve a different problem with a circuit where the load resistor varies in resistance. Rather than solving for Vth 3 times, we found it only for when the load resistor is at 36 ohms.

We are assigned a lab where we construct the circuit drawn above. Before we do that, we are asked to find the currents in the circuit using any method we have learned. We found that mesh analysis was easiest and found the currents using that method.

We check our answer using EveryCircuit and found that our calculated currents are accurate.

Here we measured the actual resistances of each resistor. On the left is the theoretical value of the resistor and on the right is the actual.

Here we setup the circuit for our lab and use our Analog Discovery to power the circuit to find the voltage drop across our load resistor.

We are given a new element to add to our circuit, a potentiometer. Rather than swapping resistors in and out of our breadboard, the potentiometer can change its resistivity based on how it is turned. 

We found the voltage across the potentiometer at various resistances and the power using the formula P = V^2/R

We graphed the power vs resistance from the data before and found that the graph is a root curve.